


It's Your Face I'm Looking For

by cailures



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: F/M, Undercover in the Suburbs, fake married
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-22
Updated: 2015-08-22
Packaged: 2018-04-16 16:23:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4631994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cailures/pseuds/cailures
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For #6</p>
    </blockquote>





	It's Your Face I'm Looking For

**Author's Note:**

> For #6

_The First Morning_

There was a sweet young couple staying at the Cape Cod on Birch Drive as part of a late honeymoon trip. So very odd that the Blains had signed up with Air BnB, as they didn't seem the type, but they had, and this lovely young couple was using their place for a week, and weren't they just the sweetest?

The Blains, an older and perfectly respectable couple, had gone out of town unexpectedly, leaving their place in the hands of these strangers, but maybe it was better than hiring a house sitter, and you didn't want the place empty all the time, not with the robberies in the area recently. The neighborhood watch could only do so much, after all.

Of course, one had to make sure this modern young couple were the right sort of people. When a curious neighbor congratulated them on their marriage, the young man- Jake, was it?- had slung his arm over his blushing bride's shoulder and said "All I had to do was ask."

The bride's smile had frozen a little. "Well, there was a little more to it than that."

"Well there was years of effort before that, but recently I got lucky and-" He continued enthusiastically.

"You're making me sound easy, sweetie." A warning note had crept into her voice. She played uneasily with the wedding band on her finger. 

The young man seem to snap out of whatever he was thinking, and looked at his bride again. A brief flash of alarm, and then a joyous smile was on his face. "I would never be here if it wasn't for you. Being here means the completion of one of my fondest wishes. Better?"

"Better." She smiled back, slipping an arm around his waist.

"There's no one I'd rather be working with than-"

She coughed and tightened her arm quickly. "Ha ha family joke. We're the Werkings now, you know. With an E. I’m Amy Werking and he’s Jake Werking.”

The neighbor blinked. "Mr. and Mrs. Werking?"

Jake nodded quickly. "It's German."

The neighbor nodded, though she looked at them a little oddly. "Well, it was very nice to meet you, Mr and Mrs. Werking. I hope you enjoy your stay."

"Thanks. I'm sure it will be memorable."

A strange pair, but they seemed to work well together. The neighbor wished them well and moved on.

 

***  
 _Three Days and Several Years Before_

For Peralta, Gibson was one of the flies in the ointment of his life. He'd been a new detective when he'd taken the case of the thief with an eye towards fine art. He'd only been given the case because it was verging on going cold, and the other detectives had more important and hotter work to do. He wanted so very badly to prove himself. He’d studied the scenes, narrowed his suspects, did a lot of work that broke in the soles of new higher pay-grade shoes, and a lot more that made his back ache with hours hunched over the desk. Gibson hadn't left much to go on, which is how Peralta ended up with such slim leads to follow, but follow them he did, determined to find the feet making the footprints. Or something. He wasn't great at one-liners yet, but he was working on that, too.

He’d done a one-man stakeout based on a hunch. He was astoundingly proud, and nearly as shocked, when he'd caught the guy in the act, based on little more some thin thread of evidence. Gibson had run while Jake was still dumbfounded at his luck at being right. He'd had to chase him down on foot, out of the building and down a dimly lit street, splashing through puddles reflecting the city lights, and part of him thought ' _Yes, this looks like what a real detective does! This is like a noir film_ '. He'd even done a spectacular hood slide to capture Gibson as he's tried to dart into traffic. Sure, he failed on the dismount, and his 'dramatic interception' was more of an 'awkward crash', plus he'd scored a jagged line across the paint on the car's hood, and the owner had written several angry letters to the department, but from the moment he slapped cuffs on Gibson until the man went off to prison, Jake had been more puffed up than a marshmallow man in a vacuum chamber, basking in the glory of having caught _The Nightworker_ (a nickname he'd given Gibson, but never said outside his own skull). This was the case that earned him the right to put his feet up on the desk.

Then Gibson got out on a technicality, some idiotic paperwork detail from a clerk somewhere in the court, and Jake's prize brass ring turned to base copper and turned his skin green. The story of catching a criminal mastermind, hood slide and everything, was no longer worth a beer at the bar if it ended with "and then they let him go because something got filed in the wrong department". Pity beer, maybe, which was still beer, but you couldn't raise a pity beer and get a cheer from the guys. You couldn't quaff it. You could only clink it sadly against someone else's glass as you got progressively drunker and even more pathetic.

So when Gibson's name turned up again, years later, Peralta was on it with a vengeance.

A fence got caught on a raid of a warehouses of questionable material, and one of the items recovered was a piece Gibson had stolen before he was caught the first time, gathering dust until it could be sold without raising alarms. It had company in the form of a number of more recent items of a similar style. The fence was glad to spill details and information to get a little slack in the noose around his own neck, and offer up Gibson for a little leeway. Jake was there to question him as soon as he could get in the door. The statue of limitations on the older cases was on his mind, and he wanted to get Gibson on everything if it was possible, old and new.

Gibson, it turned out, had left the city after his near imprisonment, but he'd only gone out to the 'burbs, where there were lots of neighborhoods with no one around during the day. His M.O. had changed enough after his near miss that they hadn't connected the new crimes to his old pattern. He was stealing during the day. He was working alone. No one knew his tricks. But, as luck would have it, the fence did know what his next target would be, as he'd been busy lining up a buyer for a particular piece. They now had the address of a home, a name, an item and a window of opportunity.

The current owners of the art, A Mr. and Mrs. Blain, were more than cooperative with police when they was contacted about the potential crime, and offered to provide any assistance to keep their belongings secure. This included access to their house while they stayed safely out of the way. It was, they said, all very exciting, and would make quite a thrilling tale once they would be able to share it, but they'd just as happily go spend a week at a spa. Peralta promised that they'd treat everything in the house with the utmost care, respect, and professionalism, although privately he was dreaming of leg traps and drop nets and anything else that would ensure that this time Gibson was caught and stayed caught.

Jake was not thrilled to learn that tracking the guy down would involve doing things out beyond the limits of decent delivery. He was even less thrilled that Gibson's new pattern would mean he couldn't call him The Nightworker anymore. 'Dayworker' wasn't anywhere near as cool, and just sounded like the kind of person you picked up in a parking lot and didn't ask about papers.

But when he begged Captain Holt to arrange the connections and the paperwork to let him please take the case, Holt's only requirement was that he take someone other than Doyle along on the stakeout. Well, that and some boring paperwork requirements involving jurisdictional agreements, a lecture on how he'd be representing his precinct and the level of decorum expected of him, warnings about insurance issues, and most importantly a strict command that the term 'The Nightworker' never show up on any of the official documents. Easy, really. So he needed someone who was trustworthy and detailed oriented and would ensure everything was done to the letter. Someone who could pass for a suburbanite.

For Amy, the motivation was a little simpler. 

Every cop had their sore points, the type of cases where they had some personal sensitivity that made them want to be involved. Sure, any and all of them would get passionately involved in cases where a kid got hurt, or an old person, and a lot of cops had issues about crimes against single mothers. But some cops had other things that made them step forward and ask to take lead. 

Doyle would put in extra hours in any crime at a good restaurant, partly for the privilege of touring their kitchens, and maybe to ask their chefs a few questions not directly related to the crime. He never took a free meal until the case was solved, and even then, only one per place. He'd give the staff one of his earnest looks and say that he already knew how hard they worked and how difficult the food industry was. He was proud to do his job and just glad to help them stay in business. There were a few restaurants that felt snubbed when he passed their cases on to other detectives.

Terry's thing was artists. Often they'd look at him and wonder if they were being put on, but given half an hour with him, they'd be discussing techniques and schools and somehow he could always, always bring them out of their shells and get them to recount details in a way that he could translate into clues. Plus it meant that their squad room had some of the most beautiful sketches hanging in the break area, even if some of them did have evidence tags on the corners.

Captain Holt was really too high up to take lead on every case involving gay bashing, but he'd often stop by when victims or their families were in the station, and assure them that his officers were going to take this very seriously. He was extremely good at being calm, professional, and a little intimidating in a way that a lot of folks found oddly comforting in the circumstances. He was no more forthcoming with personal details in these situations than in any other, but he was so clearly sincere that it seemed to put folks more at ease.

Rosa had a thing for any crime where the victim was a school teacher. No one asked her the details of why. They just brought her the files and then stayed out of her way for a while.

For Amy, it was any case where justice had been denied because someone hadn't done the paperwork correctly. If it was a case of the defendant's lawyer being a nit-picky weasel, she'd be infuriated, but it too much a part of the procedures of the legal system for her to burn herself out on it. If, however, the problem was pure incompetence on the case of some clerk who'd never have to risk their life on the street, or sit and tell the victim that no, there wasn't anything they could do to prevent the perp from going free- well, more than one law clerk had decided to up their attention to detail after they found themselves getting ticketed every time they went a mile over the speed limit, or dropped trash next to the can rather than in it. Stories went around the DA's office about the judge's assistant who didn't file a request in time, letting a wife beater go free, and what had happened when Amy caught the clerk in an act of public urination outside a dive bar. And that was when she was just a beat cop. Now that she was a detective, there were assistants who had alerts set on their phones to let them know when she was going to be in the same building as they were. Some had been known to hide in closets to avoid her.

When Peralta asked her if she'd be willing to go out over the bridges to correct a paperwork error that was years overdue, she said yes.

It wasn't until he was already on his way out to the stakeout that the thrill of finally having a second shot at Gibson receded enough and some little voice at the back of his head was able to point out that he was going to spend several days practically alone with Santiago. He thought _Oh God. What have I done?_

***

_The First Night_

"So, which room do you want?" He surveyed the choices. The home was plush. There were multiple bedrooms to choose from. There were multiple bathrooms. He was fairly sure there were multiple _kitchens_. He was beginning to suspect he could just keep living here after the case was over and it would take them at least a week to find him. "There's, like, five. Plus a couch in the office."

Amy surveyed the available choices. "Master bedroom, guest bedroom, grown child's bedroom still left intact- kid's probably living in the city and has to be at least thirty by now."

Jake peered in the rooms at the other end of the hall. "Wife's bedroom for when they're fighting. Mistress's bedroom for when they're _really_ fighting-"

"One of us should probably take the in-law suite above the garage, to give us more coverage." Amy said.

Jake felt an urge to make sure he got the better choice, like yelling 'top bunk!' at a sleepover as a kid, but he wasn't sure which that would be, with so many options. It was followed closely by a sudden pang of disappointment at the idea of having Amy in a separate building at night. No sneaky peeks at her in her pajamas, or bumping into her in the morning with both of them sleep-mussed and yawning. "I'm surprised there aren't servant's quarters."

"Behind the kitchen, but I think they converted them to an artist's space for the wife's pottery room or something like that."

"The rich are weird. I can't imagine having an entire room for art, let alone an entire room for _bad_ art." He poked at a picture on the wall, taking delight in moving the frame just a tiny bit askew.

Amy shrugged. If there hadn't been an entire room for art, bad or otherwise, they wouldn't be there to catch an art thief, after all. "I'll take the in-law suite. We'll have to be careful about not being seen to be sleeping separately on our honeymoon," she made air quotes around the last word "and I'm up early enough that I can take the morning shift from there before you're awake, and be back in the main house before the neighbors notice."

"Good call. I'll take the couch in the downstairs office, since it's close to the art room. It looks comfy enough."

They headed back downstairs, upstairs now relegated to irrelevant to their purpose. Amy stopped to straighten the picture frame again as she moved past it.

In the office, she surveyed the space while Jake stashed his go bag in an inconspicuous spot. She prodded one of the cushions on the couch in question with an evaluating finger. "For what they probably paid for it, it had better be good for sleeping. This would make a good base during the day, too. You sure you don't want one of the bedrooms though? We know Gibson usually strikes around midday. He has to come inside, since the art room has no exterior access, not even a window, due to the risk of UV on some of the paintings. This is awfully close to the target if he breaks pattern about timing."

Jake peered through the blinds. He'd have to leave them closed, since Gibson was certain to be casing the place, and he didn't want to give them away. Enough light should still filter in to let him navigate in the dark. At least this area had some streetlights. "Nah, the office is closest to the street. I don't think I could sleep without at least some traffic noise. This place is quiet." He cocked an eyebrow and dropped his voice a bit. "Too quiet."

Amy smiled. "People live out here for the peace and quiet. I don't see how they can stand it. When I was a kid and the TV broke down, my father would say we could follow the game by opening the windows and listening to the neighborhood. You could tell who had scored and who was winning just by listening to people yelling at their sets. This place feels post-apocalyptic in comparison."

Jake made a zombie face and lurched at Amy. "They're coming for you, Amy!" he groaned.

She held up a warning finger. "I'm armed."

"Okay, fine." He straightened up.

They walked back to the kitchen. Jake dragged one foot behind him in a lurching motion for a few steps, when Amy wasn't looking. 

The Blains had told them they could help themselves to any of the food in the fridge, which was certain to be better than the usual stake-out fare of vending machine snacks, but it might mean they had to actually cook. There had been paperwork about that too. No burning down the house. No even going near the wine cellar. Because of course there was a wine cellar.

Thee kitchen sprawled across more space than Jake's entire apartment. There were cupboards full of good plates. There were more cupboards with even better plates. There were cupboards with things that looked a lot like plates, but he suspected had some other rich-person term for them and were never to be used for simply holding food. There was, for no discernible reason, a wire chicken stuffed full of fake fruit.

Jake rubbed his hands together. "Okay, want to see if we can figure out what in this place is food?"

Amy was reading the label of a jar she'd pulled from a nearby cabinet. The script was curling and elegant. "I once had a date take me out to a five star restaurant, and I swear it took me five minutes of reading the menu to find the nouns. It was still less fancy than some of this stuff." She put the container back.

"We must never tell Boyle of this place." Jake was digging around in the freezer, which had been disguised as a long cabinet along the main island. "Ha!" He pulled out a box from the gentle fog that had issued from the open door. "I found the pizza."

"A true detective's instinct." Amy looked at the package. "Porcini mushrooms, free-range organic chicken, and truffle oil?"

"It's still pizza. I think." Jake considered the ingredients list. The nutritional values were still far enough off from being healthy that he felt some reassurance, but he was sure the thing in the box labeled pizza was as far from decent foldable New York City pizza as, well, far as he was from New York City at the moment.

"I'll figure out the oven." Amy said. "At least it looks like something you don't have to be a professional chef to operate."

Jake started digging around in one of the cupboards for something that might be mistaken for chips. They'd probably be made from some exotic and weird looking relative of a potato, and be cooked in something like unicorn tears, but if there was pizza, there had to be chips, too. "Yeah, the only part of Gibson's new method we've been able to figure out is what he's not doing- no homes with live-in or daily staff, so he's not getting in that way. The Blains have a gardener and maid that both come once a week, but otherwise the place is empty when they're not home. Same for the neighbors. He's not sneaking in with support staff like he used to, but hitting when the place is quiet. We haven't even figured out how he's disabling the security systems yet, but he hasn't set off any alarms or been caught on tape."

He found the chips. The text on the bag included two full paragraphs of description of the history of the various ingredients. He showed it to Amy. "Will you look at this? I feel like I'm being asked to adopt this food, rather than eat it."

She leaned close to him, reading the package. "Chip is a very WASP-y sort of name. Open it up, let's get a look at him- er, it."

With Amy so close, his elbow bumped against her as he pulled the bag open. "Sorry."

She was looking in the bag, but gave him a little shrug. "Still looks like chips to me. You try one first."

Jake reached in and pulled out a thin wafer of potato-related substance and popped it in his mouth. "He's delicious." he said, around a mouthful of chips, and reached for another. "Think of it less as eating than it is sending him to a really exclusive boarding school."

***

_Second Morning_.

Jake had taken the shift that covered the first part of the night, after Amy had retired to the in-law suite. She'd take the early morning hours before he awoke. Spreading their hours to cover as much of the clock as possible while still having them both awake for the prime daylight hours meant that he'd slept into late morning. Plus the couch was more comfortable than his bed had ever been, and how was that even possible? 

He used the walkie-talkie to alert Amy to his upright and conscious status, allowing her come back to the house from her observation position. He was mildly disappointed that she was wearing fairly standard sweats and t-shirt rather something less practical, and that her version of morning dishevelment was that one of her shoelaces was untied. She was carrying her own go bag, which presumably held her normal work clothing.

"Have you been awake long?" he asked.

"Couple of hours. I've been watching the neighborhood empty out. There's a pretty good range of views from the suite. We're still a ways off from prime likelihood period for Gibson, but I'd rather be back in the main house before it gets much later. If you're ready to take over primary monitoring duty, I'm going to go get a quick shower."

"There isn't one in the in-law suite?"

She cleared her throat and said. "I'm dying to try out the one in the guest bathroom. It looks nicer than any I'd ever seen. Is that abusing stakeout privileges?" she said the last a little uneasily.

He refrained from mentioning that he often went days without showering on a stakeout. She'd probably considered it imposition enough that she'd waited until he was up and functional. "Knock yourself out. I'll figure out the coffee makers. Or at least one of them."

She went upstairs.

He looked through her notes, comparing the names to the map of families in the neighborhood, getting a feeling for patterns of movement. No unusual vans in the area. No alterations in the normal patters of suburban exhalation and inhalation of commuters. They were sure Gibson would be making his attempt this week, but he couldn't yet see anything in the surveillance information to indicate where it would be coming from. Nothing new to add to their theories.

He decided he needed some coffee to get his mind working.

The kitchen had multiple coffee machines, which ranged from complicated multi-step mini-factories of polished copper that would take beans and do some complicated alchemy of roasting and grinding and might very well include a tiny little greenhouse to grow the bushes from scratch, and another that looked like some futuristic shining invention that used sealed packets and generated coffee from them in some weird black-box process that might have been been developed for the space station rather than a suburban home. Looking at them made him long for the simple stained carafe of the curmudgeonly old machine at the station, where the coffee was horrible, but the process was simple enough for distracted detectives on the late shift to perform without any higher thought process involved. He was beginning to wonder if there was a Starbucks anywhere nearby, or how hard it could really be to make coffee with, say, a hammer for hitting the beans and a pot of boiling water, when Amy came back into the kitchen from upstairs. 

She was dressed in something closer to her normal office clothing, slacks and a button down shirt. Her concession to relaxation was having her hair up in only a half ponytail. How did she managed to get the clothes in her go bag look like they had been freshly pressed? She was still wearing the same shoes though, both now neatly tied. She didn't exactly fit his image of a woman on her honeymoon, but at least she'd relaxed her look enough to no longer scream 'cop' to anyone who saw her.

"How was the shower?" he asked mildly.

"I think the wife must have picked it out so that if they were fighting, she wouldn't be tempted to forgive him too soon. That was amazing."

He could feel himself boggling at the statement, straight out bulging eyes, dropped jaw, and a host of images going to his brain and other areas of his body. "Amy!" He didn't squeak when he said it. Did he?

She blushed a little. "Sorry. Unprofessional. It was just that good."

He fumbled with the likeliest of the coffee machines for a moment, trying to regain his composure. He blew out a breath, trying to clear unwanted images and cobwebs out of his head. Professionalism. Work. Most irritating case of his life. Not his partner in the shower. He cleared his throat. "I'll put on my suit and drive Blain's car out of the neighborhood in a bit. I can do some scouting for suspicious vehicles on the walk back." 

They'd discussed this the night before. They had to make it look as normal as possible to anyone watching the house, and hope that Gibson hadn't heard the rumors of the newlyweds staying at his target site. The house had to appear empty during the day. They were betting that the fact that Mr. Blain's car had tinted windows and that he drove Mrs. Blain to the station most mornings would provide them with some leeway, and their presence wouldn't be so obvious as to scare Gibson off.

When Gibson had still been The Nightworker, he'd gained access to his targets by sneaking in with crews working on adjacent buildings- Peralta had caught him because he'd noticed that two of the sites hit had parties going on nearby that had used the same florist service. They hadn't yet figured out how he was getting into residences out in the 'burbs. They knew he'd likely to come to this residence soon, but not how, and one of his early goals was to do a little scouting of his own around the neighborhood to see if he could figure out the soft spot Gibson was exploiting. Gibson might know his face, so he had have a quick and easy disguise to use, and a stack of 'lost dog' signs to post for a reason to walk around the area a little. 

He'd only do it once. There were a few local cops in the area finding reasons to poke around as well under various levels of obviousness, which was another possible exposure, and Amy had argued against him taking the risk, but he couldn't feel he'd covered all his angles without at least some street time while he was there. After this, they'd both be largely bound to the house during the hours the neighborhood was supposed to empty. Reviewing the plan helped him get his mind back into focus.

He gave the coffee machine another poke. It beeped at him, but whether it was a 'ready' beep or a warning beep, he couldn't tell. "Hey, do you think there's a Starbucks nearby?"

"It's the suburbs. There's nothing nearby. That's the point." Amy said, looking through the kitchen drawers. She gave a gasp of delight. "But I found the manual!"

"Only you could sound so happy about that." He rubbed some more sleep out of his eyes. 

"You'll sound happier if I can figure this thing out. Go have a shower. I might even have fresh coffee ready by the time you're out."

He glanced at the manual. That thing had to be an inch thick. For a coffee machine. "Yeah, right. I already know you're going to read the whole thing, and probably take notes."

"The shower has dual heads and a massage setting. Now go."

"Yeah, I still bet I finish first."

"It's not supposed to be a race."

"Not supposed to be a race. Title of your suburban sex tape." He said, mostly out of habit, as he moved out of the room.

"Go or there will definitely not be coffee waiting for you when you're done." she said, looking a little annoyed, but as she was looking at the table of contents in the coffee machine manual, he wasn't entirely certain that it was directed at him.

As he trudged up the stairs, he wondered if the shower was really that good. And if it was, would it help him to stop thinking of lurid thoughts of Amy, or would it bring more to mind, wondering just how much she had enjoyed it?

***

The shower really was that good. And the coffee was ready by the time he came back downstairs again. The coffee was also really that good. He took a second cup in a travel mug as he went out to the garage to give the performance of the house emptying out for the day. 

He spotted nothing more notable in his walk back than the usual collection of quiet suburban houses, boxwoods hedges and manicured lawns. The 'lost dog' signs he put up here and there gave him the opportunity take note of what services were advertised in the area, and he took pull tabs from the few fliers up, wondering if Gibson could be using one of them for local home access. They were sparse- he suspected that that this area was not overly fond of street advertisement, and foot traffic wasn't terribly common. He saw a few vans from local services, and he made note of those names as well, more information to cross-check.

He snuck back into the house, using the access route that was least likely to be seen from the street.

"Honey, I'm home!" He announced as he closed the door behind him, pulling off the hat that had been part of his disguise. Adding a note of disappointment to his voice, he added "And here you are, just watching TV." 

She was bent over her laptop, watching a dozen different views of the house and property from multiple angles, checking the additional monitoring cameras they'd installed as redundancies to the home's own security systems, which they expected to be disabled during the theft attempt, whenever it came. She didn't look up. "Shhh, my stories are on."

He shook his head. "That was unexpectedly appropriate."

She spared a glance at her watch, and then at him. "Come on in, tell me all about your hard quarter of a morning at work, dear."

Since she'd been looking at video with active time stamps most of the time he'd been gone, he made a face over her affectation of looking at her watch. He took the seat next to her.

They settled in for the task of the day. Jake ran the names he'd found over the morning, looking for another thread to follow, while Amy shifted through the reports from the more recent robberies, trying to find a new pattern. They traded off monitoring duty between them, and made regular check-ins with the local PD that radioed in at intervals. For an occasional change of pace, they worked on the ever-present backlog of paperwork from their home station, because the modern office did not care too much about your location. At least the house had decent wifi.

He ignored Boyle's request for a full report on the kitchen.

They only talked a little, and mostly about the case. On one hand, he'd rarely had as good an opportunity just for teasing her, and his constant awareness of her made him want to poke at her, just to make her as aware of him, silly as it was. On the other hand, he knew how quickly things could go wrong, how they could end up grating on each other's nerves instead. Partly because a lecture on the topic had been part of Holt's conditions for his support for him taking the case. He was desperately wanted to solve this case, grateful for her professional dedication and attitude, and, increasingly important, he did not want to screw this up with her, whatever it was. He wanted to ask her a hundred personal questions, just to fill the silence, and because there was no one else to hear her answers but him.

But when he raised his head to make a joke, make an enquiry, and saw her sitting at the desk on the other side of the room, quietly reading through a case file, he thought 'I could get use to this' and left it unsaid.

***

In the early evening, they'd decided to go for a walk down to a nearby park. They were out of range of hours Gibson was likely to show, as people were returning home from jobs in the city, and other teams, posing as the weekly cleaning crew, were monitoring the house. Amy was still worried about it, but she wanted out as much as he did, and as newlyweds, they'd be less conspicuous together than apart. Arm in arm, they walked down the street to a park that was mostly to provide a buffer between the development and the local elementary school. 

"You're sure Gibson won't recognize you?"

Jake looked a little uncomfortable. "The last time he saw me, I still had-" he cleared his throat a bit and his voice dropped to a low mumble "the mustache."

Amy gasped. "I remember that. You still had that on the first case we worked together. That and the windbreaker. You looked-" catching the embarrassed look on his face, she paused and gave his arm an affectionate squeeze. "memorable."

"I looked like I was one set of oversized lapels from a disco routine." He said, honestly. He was entirely certain she's heard about the hood slide in her investigation of the case. He thought back to their first case together. "You, on the other hand, looked like you'd spent half the night up polishing your badge with a toothbrush."

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Of course not." She glanced away, and now it was her turn to look embarrassed. "Toothpaste is too abrasive. I bought a special polishing cloth."

He let out a bark of laughter. "I knew it!"

"So you were going for, what, Starsky and Hutch? I was always more a Joe Friday kinda person. We still solved that case."

"I thought you were going to staple me to the desk by the end of it."

"I might have, but you kept losing my stapler every time I let you borrow it."

"You mentioned that a time or thirty. I was going to glue it to your desk in revenge."

"Shows what you know. I was considering doing the same thing just so you couldn't take it."

They were approaching the park. There were families playing near the swings and the slides, and a few folks playing with dogs near a section with a low fence. A perfect opportunity to mingle, get to know the neighbors, do some detective work under the guise of gossip.

Jake moved his hand to put his arm around her waist. He patted at the small lump of the walkie-talking tucked into the back of her pants. "And here we are, just a few short years later, married and in the suburbs."

She brushed the hair back out from behind her ear, so as to cover the earpiece. She faced him, giving him a look that was a disturbingly good imitation of marital affection. "Let's go question some people."

He really did love the way her nose crinkled when she smiled like that.

"Meet up in fifteen. I'll take the area with the dogs, you can take the kids." 

"Stay off the slides." 

"Spoilsport."

He did a little scouting around the dog park area, but, lacking a dog, didn't go in. He eavesdropped on a couple of conversations about sports, one about home renovations, one about squirrels in the attic, and something about repointing brickwork. He caught one slightly slobbery ball that got lobbed out of the dog section, and ended up in conversation with the owner's about his particular breed of scruffy looking little creature, which had something to do with some war or other. He mostly tried to be discreet about wiping his hand on the back of his pants.

Amy, meanwhile, had only to sit on an empty spot on a bench before a middle-aged woman in a natty cardigan sat near her and struck up a conversation. Judging by the knowing looks coming from their direction, he was the topic of conversation.

He turned his attention back the story of why a dog that was basically a glorified rat catcher was a pinnacle of its breed. It was only when his storyteller smiled and pointed over his shoulder that Jake realized someone had been yelling his name for a bit.

His _undercover_ name, which he hadn't responded to.

He excused himself and jogged over to the bench where Amy was smiling her tense smile next to her new best friend, the natty cardigan lady.

The middle aged woman had her head tilted and was smirking at him. "Oh honey, you gotta learn to come faster than that when your wife calls you or the marriage will never work."

Feeling flustered, Jake felt an answer spilling out before he'd thought about it. "Sorry. Still not used to the new name."

"You took her last name?" A raised eyebrow at this. "How modern."

Amy's eyes widened in a momentary panic. "I have papers published under my name, so changing it would have been bad for my career." she said, a tad quickly.

The neighbor looked at her. "Oh?"

He could see Amy struggling for more to pad out her story. Quick, strengthen it. Get attention off her. He thought. "Couldn't take away from her name recognition. You know what they say, happy wife, happy life. And it was an upgrade. My family name was, uh-" he floundered, and hit on inspiration "Wakey. Got called Jakey Wakey all through high school. My parents were terrible people. Hated it." He added in a dramatic eye-roll to his story.

The nosy neighbor seemed mollified. At least on that account. "So what do you do, Mr. Werking?"

"I'm a long-term investment advisor." He improvised, a little lightbulb of inspiration clicking on in his head. "Primarily interested in helping people set up their futures for the next twenty to thirty years. I really like the feeling of getting my hands on someone's work and helping to lead them to the future they deserve."

The neighbor nodded, approving. "So what do you suggest?"

Behind her, he could see Amy smothering a laugh. Distracted, he felt the lightbulb of inspiration click off again. 

Amy came to his rescue. "We generally try to keep people away from bonds. Very unstable, high risk. Get people locked into a secure program as soon as possible." Her delivery was perfect, her tone coming across as proud and knowing.

He grinned. He wanted to high five her. "They all deserve a big house, upstate, with a yard and lots of security." 

"And he looks through everything they've ever done to make sure they get it." Amy said to the neighbor, but her eyes were twinkling, and her smile had brought out her dimples.

The neighbor, realizing the conversation was going on around her and not with her, and mistaking the reason, heaved herself to her feet. "Well, I can see I'm in the way of you too lovebirds. Happy honeymoon."

"Thanks!" Amy waved her off, and shot Jake an I-can't-believe-we-got-away-with-that look.  
He wanted to grab her and kiss her so much in that moment. He gripped the back of the bench until he felt the worn-out paint flaking under his fingers.

***

_Second night_. 

They were still both in the house, waiting for the quiet to settle in over the neighborhood before Amy went back to the in-law suite for the night. Jake was keeping an eye on the street, drinking more of the really excellent coffee in preparation of his night shift, while Amy, on the couch, monitored the feed from the cams they'd set up around the property.

"We should get the details about our identities straight, to avoid more risks like this afternoon." she said, offhandedly.

"I thought we winged it just fine."

She looked up from her laptop screen, frowning. "We were lucky we came up with something on the spot, but we know this guy cases the neighborhood fairly well. We have to have our stories down so we don't stand out.Act strange and the neighbors will talk. The more they talk, the more likely Gibson hears there's someone other than the Blains in residence here."

"Fine. What do you want to know?"

"How was our wedding?" Amy asked.

Jake considered, pretending to give it serious thought. "It was gorgeous. I wore a powered blue tuxedo with ruffles down the front, had my hair done up in a mullet."

"You did not." She sounded aghast. Amy was the sort of person who would sound aghast, and even use that word to describe it. Aghast. And prim, because she continued primly “You wore a grey morning suit."

"Really? Sounds too much like mourning." He exaggerated the last word, pulling his mouth down in a long frown.

" _Morning_. Like the start of a new day, or a new life. Besides, I like the tails."

"Okay. I wore a morning suit, whatever that is. What did you wear? White dress?"

Her expression of dislike wrinkled her nose. "No way. I haven't worn anything like that since my quinceañera. I looked awful, like confectionary. I might have worn my dress uniform."

He blew past the momentary distraction of the idea of a fifteen year old Amy in an ugly white dress, headed straight to the more alluring mock indignation. "You got to wear your uniform, but I wore something with a tail? Why can't we both wear our uniforms?"

"If we both wore our uniforms, it would have looked like we were trying to arrest someone. Slapping on cuffs instead of slipping on rings. I got to wear mine because I look better in blue."

He conceded the point. "Fair enough. I'd be tempted to go for a full theme wedding, but I suspect you wanted something more traditional."

"What theme?" she asked, curious.

He thought for a moment. Looking out at the carefully tended yards of suburbia gave him an idea. "Jurassic park- the original one, obviously. We put a stand of tall grass by the altar, I wear khaki shorts, circle around looking for you, you sneak up behind me wearing a raptor suit-"

Amy looked pained. Pained and amused. "Are you saying I'm a dinosaur?"

"No, I'm saying you're a clever girl."

She threw a pillow at him.

He blocked it with a forearm. "Hey! Inappropriate violence!"

"It's a throw pillow. It was entirely appropriate." she was laughing.

"I said you were clever! It was a compliment! Sheesh." He tossed the pillow back to her, though it fell a little short.

"You would design an entire wedding ceremony around a joke." She leaned over and picked the pillow up, gently setting it back into place.

"It's a classic! It would have been-" he started.

"We can use it at the reception." she interrupted him.

He raised his eyebrows in surprise. "I'll keep that in mind." He wanted to say _I'm holding you to that_ , but it would bring up the image of holding her, and when did she switch to talking about this in the present tense? Never mind. "So what kind of wedding did we have?"

"Fairly traditional. Mid spring, so we could hold it outdoors before it was too hot, and everything would be in bloom. So somewhere with trees and open space, maybe in upstate. More upstate than this, anyway."

He nodded. "Far enough outside the city that we could keep the guest list down by making travel inconvenient, but close enough that it wouldn't look like a vacation spot, so that people would still feel obligated to send us presents. Good thinking."

"I didn't say that." She was aghast again.

"But you aren't disagreeing. Got a few relatives you want to dodge?"

"Cousins. Ugh." Her tone was expressive enough. She smoothed a strand of hair away from her face, and then her voice was light and airy again, drawing up a fantasy image. "Captain Holt walked me down the aisle." 

He scoffed. "Excuse you, Captain Holt was my best man."

She looked like she was preparing a list of arguments for a moment, then smiled. "No, Captain Holt _officiated_." she grinned, solving the puzzle, head tilted a little the way she did when making a good point. 

He'd forgotten the Boyle-Linetti wedding. Or repressed it, more likely. Surely if Holt would officiate for the parents of squad members, he'd officiate for actual squad members as well. Jake wondered what kind of speech the captain would give. 

Amy continued. "Gina can give me away."

"Of course. She'd never be happy with anything less central, and she does love making an entrance. So who was the best man? Boyle would want it."

"Him or Rosa." It could have been a joke, almost, but her tone was serious. 

He ponder this. He suspected that if he asked, she'd say something about the best man's duty was to make sure the groom stood up and met his obligations. Everyone in the squad knew Rosa was that person for him. She made him manage so many tasks just by being ready to kick his ass if he screwed up. If he had an attack of nerves, Rosa could just stare at him until it passed. Was it weird that he could imagine the conversation Amy would have about the suggestion? That he knew what she would say, and why, and she trusted him to understand without explaining it first. _Amy missing an opportunity to explain things to him_. They really were spending too much time together. He realized he hadn't answered her question. "Tough choice. Rosa. Boyle can be the ring bearer. We'll give him a little pillow."

He moved his fingers against the coffee mug in his hand, feeling the ring- a prop supplied by the department- scrape a tiny bit against the ceramic. It had become a habit during the stakeout, fiddling with the ring as a nervous, yet reassuring, habit.

"If you get Rosa, I want Terry for the bridesmaid's side. He'd organize a great shower." Again, not a joke, just a warm fondness in her voice.

"His girls would make the best flower girls."

"That would be so adorable." She was nearly cooing over the idea.

He had to agree. The image was before him, clear as if he were looking at photographer's pictures, the two of them on a sunny spring day, flowers in the trees, and their friends gathered around them. How he would stand, and watch her coming down the aisle. He'd always been one to joke about marriage, enjoying the bachelor's parties the night before the ceremonies so much more than the actual ceremonies when his friends got hitched. But picturing his own wedding, his own wedding to Amy, with their team around them like family, momentarily caused an ache somewhere around his diaphragm, like something inside him had grabbed hold of the idea with a grip that made it hard to breathe around.

The motion detector beeped. Someone was accessing the back porch. 

For a moment they both sat upright. Then Amy, looking at the feeds, frowned in disappointment. "False alarm. Raccoon."

She turned the laptop to show him the screen, where a small waddling mammalian figure was exploring the edge of the recycling bin.

Jake grimaced. "Right location, fits some burglar descriptions, but darn it, not our guy."

"Could still be an art thief. Some of the 'art' in that room is indistinguishable from recycling."

"I don't think we have cuffs small enough to arrest it." He was thinking through the logistics of putting handcuffs on a raccoon- were they handcuffs if the criminal didn't technically have hands? Were raccoon paws dexterous enough to qualify?- when Amy sighed.

"It wouldn't work, you know."

"The handcuffs? I was thinking maybe zip ties, but I doubt raccoons-"

She threw the pillow at him again. "Not the raccoon. The wedding."

"Why not?"

"We wouldn't have been getting married in our uniforms, either of us, because we aren't cops in this scenario. We're whoever the Werkings are, and they are definitely not cops." She paused, and continued a little more softly. "We were thinking about it like it was us, not them."

He looked at her. Her expression was wistful, a little sad, and a little serious. Pointing out something that was just a bit painful and she was just a little reluctant to bring up. Reluctant to shatter the little daydream they had both wandered into. He could feel a similar expression on his own face, and tried, in a confused way, to think of what to say. _I didn't mean it like that? How did **you** mean it? It was fun to think about? Say you'll marry me and we'll do it and let's go try out that shower together while we're at it?_

Fortunately, they were interrupted by the sound of the raccoon tipping over the recycling bin.

***

Not long after, she'd started yawning and judged it dark enough to sneak back out to the in-law suite for some shut eye. He stayed up a few hours more, alone, monitoring the feeds, and reading through both the original files and the neat, organized notes Amy had added to them.

Somewhere in the pile of notes, there was a little scratch pad Amy had been doodling on. Loops and whirls and intricate geometric patterns. In one corner there was a little scribble that read "Mrs. Amy Werking" over and over again. She must have been practicing using the name, part of worrying about their covers, and had written it several times over.

He peered closer, noting that part of the list was scratched out. He could just make out, under the rather heavy crosshatching, "Amy Peralta".

It was a long night.

***  
 _Third Morning_

When he woke up the next morning, Amy was in the kitchen, papers spread out around her as she peered intently at the laptop screen, pushing through the video feeds. From the look of it, she'd already been through at least one full batch of the morning coffee. She was also wearing nitrile gloves.

His first thought was that she must have snuck into the office while he was still asleep, because he'd been reading some of the same files she had spread around her fairly late into the night. He felt a little embarrassed at what she might have seen. At least he'd been fairly conscientious about sleeping in clothing enough to prevent too much embarrassment.

This thought was quickly chased out by wondering why there was trash all over the kitchen. It had been sorted through and placed in some kind of system, because of course Amy would keep even the garbage organized, but that didn't explain why it was here.

"Honey, are you making some sort of foodie scrapbook gift for Boyle? Because he'd probably prefer tins that had food in them."

"I cracked the case!" Amy triumphed. "I've figured out how Gibson is getting past the security systems."

Excitement and a very tiny spot of jealousy spiked his heart rate faster than the coffee would have. "How?"

"That damned raccoon last night. I was thinking about how we joked that it had been a kind of thief, and that got me thinking-" she pawed through the papers, pulling out a map of areas Gibson had been active recently, and he could see new notes scribbled along side each red mark. "- that in each case, the theft was the day before the local recycling got picked up-"

"But the art pieces weren't going out in the trash." he said, trying to get up to speed. He knew he'd checked that, following up every possibility he could think of that could bring someone near the typical suburban home.

"No, but the alarm override device was. He's using the animals to get it near the house, since no one notices animals, and they leave the spiking device that interrupts the home security system and lets him walk in without alarms going off. Every neighborhood he's hit recently has seen an uptick in complaints to animal control right before the hit, too. I checked."

"Why not just, I don't know, throw the device at the house?"

"Too fragile, too inexact a placement." she countered.

"Sneak in as a delivery person and place it yourself?"

"You'd still be spotted on the property beforehand. Most security companies automatically upload their feed to off-site, so he couldn't wipe it later, when he was in the house."

"Have it delivered in some other package?" he paced a little, thinking it through.

"You risk someone finding it."

"Use a stronger device that works from a greater distance?"

"Much more likely to be caught, because it would be more likely to interfere with other equipment in range and set someone else's alarms off." She had that look, the one that said she was prepared to play this game all day, and she had an answer ready for everything. 

He couldn't decide whether to surrender the argument to what he knew was her extremely thorough investigation of possibilities, or continue to ask just because he suspected she'd be disappointed if she didn't get to demonstrate how thorough she'd been. God, she was gorgeous when she was being brilliant. And she was always brilliant.

"Raccoons though? Seriously?" he asked, feeling he still couldn't quite concede that point.

She picked up a seemingly empty can from the counter top next to her, and tilted it to show him the empty interior. With a delighted grin on her face, she tapped it on the counter. It sounded wrong, less hollow than it should have. "There's an extra quarter inch between the inside and outside of this can. I'm betting there's some kind of jammer in there, but I can't open it without risking breaking it."

He was poking the can with a pen when she turned the laptop to show him the screen. "And then there's this." she added.

He was feeling the heft of the can when the security footage started rolling again. The image was still a little grainy, because it was night footage, but it was clear enough that he could see the raccoon was moving a little funny as it walked onto the property. His first thought was rabies, because it was a raccoon after all, but Amy froze it on a particular image.

"And enhancing..." she said, and it was so CSI that he felt like he should be looking for a camera. Which was stupid, because this place was filled with cameras. They were the ones who'd placed them, after all.

There was some kind of lump under the raccoon. It was about the same size as the can in his hand.

He was convinced. "This is the craziest case I've ever seen. What a brilliant bastard. Both of you. Him for coming up with this and you for figuring it out."

Amy was practically glowing. "I think that's even part of the scheme. I mean, who the hell thinks of strapping electronic devices to trained wildlife? It's insane. "

"Who the hell is crazy enough to have figured it out?" He replied. "I just wished he'd used rats. I could have renamed him the rat burglar. That's even better than The Nightworker."

"Well, him placing the device last night almost certainly means he's going to hit today, so you have a few hours to think of a new name."

"Wonderful. I can't wait." He looked around the room. "I can't believe I'm the one about to say this, but can we clean up in here? It's kind of a giveaway something's been going on."

Amy looked around the room like she hadn't seen it in a while. "Right. Sorry. Got caught up in research mode. You go shower." She peeled off the nitrile gloves and clapped her hands together. "I'll clean up!"

"Again, only you could sound so excited about that."

***

The house was restored to its normal, quiet order soon enough, and they alerted the local PD that today would be the day.

Then, having nothing else to do, they took up positions in rooms flanking the art room and waited. He'd cleaned the office up and set himself in a position where he could see the entrance to the art room clearly through the cracked open door, and have a clean run at it when the time came. Until then the just had to stay still and quiet, and let scenes of the last few days trace through his mind. He should be shaking with his normal pre-arrest excitement. He should be imagining the scene in the bar when he told the tale of the guy he'd caught using trained raccoons, which was frankly even a better story than the original one with the hood slide. Instead he was thinking about how nice it had been to have breakfast with Amy. To walk with her in the evening. To have her share on his inside jokes. To have her figure out the goddamn coffee maker in the morning, and steal a little of his dessert at night. How despite the fact that this should be one of the proudest days of his career, he was a little sad that this idyll was ending. How his pedantic, rule-oriented, stuffy, nerdy coworker had made him enjoy the suburbs.

Surprisingly enough, it was Amy who broke radio silence first. "Why did you call me honey this morning? Over."

"I- um, what? Over." He stumbled out a reply. At least she wasn't using the comm line the locals were listening in on.

"You called me honey in the kitchen this morning. Over."

"Habit. Part of maintaining our cover. It's the sort of thing I'd say to you in the morning if we were married. Over." He cringed again over his slip. He was so glad she couldn't see his face. Although he was suddenly very curious to see hers.

She was silent for a long time. He watched the monitors, waiting for the ones in the home security system to blip in some way to indicate Gibson was approaching. They'd replaced the recycling bin by the house, and could only hope that the disruption they'd done in finding the device hadn't caused some sort of malfunction that he'd detect or created any other variation that would make him cancel on his expected appearance. 

The walkie crackled again, and there was a long few seconds of silence before Amy spoke. "I've liked our covers. I'm sad they're almost over. Over."

He wanted to make a joke, anything to dispel the sudden lump of awkwardness in his throat. "Me too.” He tapped the ring against the walkie. “I've really liked Werking with you. With an E. Over."

Another long moment of silence. He watched the camera view from the corner of the yard. Gibson would probably approach from there, as it had the most coverage from street view. They'd installed a camera in an old birdhouse at the edge of the property, and it covered a fairly wide angle, other than one spot where there was a twig in the way. Another, by a sundial, covered the porch, the expected point of ingress. The minutes ticked by, with little movement beyond a few birds checking out feeders, and a breezes that moved the trees in the background.

Again, it was Amy that spoke first, the walkie-talkie crackling a few minutes into the silence. "Have you decided on a new nickname for Gibson? Over."

He had a scratchpad with rejected choices. He'd considered 'robby raccoon', 'banded bandit', and 'Gibcoon', but scratched them all out. He shook his head sadly. "No, but I'm really hoping he'll wear one of those tiny little masks and be wearing a striped suit. Over."

"Or a rubber mask, with a snout and whiskers. You can pull it off of him dramatically. Over."

"Oh god, don't get my hopes up over nothing. Over."

Another long silence. "Never. Over."

He stared at the walking talkie, unable to formulate a response, his tongue having turned to a lump of wet clay, or a block of wood. Surely he wasn't imagining what he'd heard in her voice. Was he?

He almost missed when the feed from the home's security system suddenly froze. The time stamp kept going, but the images weren't moving. If he hadn't been looking at it carefully, expecting something like this, he could easily have missed that anything had gone wrong. He glanced at the new devices they'd installed on the property over the last few days, relieved to see they were still working and providing live images. Someone moved into frame from the northern corner of the property.

"I've got Gibson on camera eight. Switching to channel walkie six, alerting the locals. Be ready on my signal. Over."

"Copy."

Swiftly, he changed the settings on the walkie talkie and alerted the local PD that they'd spotted Gibson entering the property.

There were three cameras giving him a view of Gibson's approach. He could feel his heartbeat starting to spike, and the clammy feeling in his hands as adrenaline flooded his system. Any time he did surveillance, he kept a mental tally of the laws being broken as he watched, waiting until the tally was high enough to charge in, looking for any danger that would warrant calling it off. It was like his own personal video game, excruciating because he didn't have any controller other than yelling "Go" or "Hold". 

Gibson walked across the lawn. Trespassing. Minor fine.

He walked onto the porch, checking something in the recycling bin. Nothing illegal there.

He pulled a small case out of his pocket and started picking the lock on the porch door. The security feeds were muted, and Jake felt the hairs on his neck prickle as the sound of the lock being worked on came to him from the doorway nearby. Possession of burglary tools with intent.

Gibson finished with the lock, opened the door, and stepped in. Illegal entry. Criminal trespass in the second degree. First if he has a weapon. 

Gibson gave a glance around. Jake held his breath, wishing a fervent, nameless prayers that Gibson would sense nothing wrong, would particularly fail to notice the presence of two police detectives observing him like cats outside a mouse hole.

Gibson moved towards the art room. Intent to commit robbery. Surely that was enough for intent.

Jake exhaled, quietly as possible, as he watched Gibson give no further attention to the rooms concealing either him or Amy, and walked confidently into the art room, where the piece he'd promised to have to the fence by the end of the week was waiting. He left the door wide open behind him, no doubt expecting an easy exit. He did not see the collection of cameras capturing his every move. He laid a hand on the case of the object. 

That was enough for grand larceny. He picked up the walkie. "Move to hallway" he said, the barest whisper. Local PD would move their vehicles in as silently as possible, and await word from inside the house. The same lack of exterior access to the room that protected the arm from UV damage would give Gibson no warning that police vehicles were converging on his location.

In the hallway, Jake moved out of the concealment of the office. Two doors down, Amy moved out as well, and in unison they silently flanked the art room door.

Jake gave a thumbs up sign. Amy, gun ready, nodded.

He held out two fingers and gestured a plan. _Me first, you second and flanking_.

He held up three fingers, starting a countdown.

Two fingers. 

_One_.

Jake stepped into the doorway, Amy right behind him. "Freeze! I've got you now, ring-tailed bandit!".

Amy, who was quickly moving to flank Gibson, shot him a look. 'ring-tailed bandit?' she mouthed.

Gibson froze. "Peralta?" he asked, disbelieving, looking over his shoulder.

Jake grinned. "You're damned right. Cuff him, Santiago."

"With pleasure." Amy said, moving forward to do so.

While another thrilling chase might have been more dramatic, there was some satisfaction in seeing Gibson's shock, and even more in seeing it turn to slumped defeat. Jake looked him over. He was heavier than before, and it did not look like the years had been especially kind, and probably couldn't have managed an effective dash for freedom anyway. He only twitched a little as the cuffs clicked closed, and muttered something about another stupid nickname, but didn't try to escape.

"I want my lawyer." was all he said.

As Amy alerted the locals that they could come in to collect their man, Jake mentally scratched 'resisting arrest' and 'fleeing the scene of a crime' from his mental tally. It was still pretty a damned impressive list.

"Ring-tailed bandit would have worked better for a jewelry thief than an art thief." Amy commented as she lead a sullen Gibson down the hall.

Jake, who was definitely adding a little bit of a strut to his walk, shrugged. "I considered Looting Lotor, but figured that would be a little obscure."

Amy's brow wrinkled. "Only to people who don't know Latin or taxonomic names." she said, a hint of contempt in her voice.

"Right. Looting Lotor it is." Jake clapped Gibson on the shoulder, as if dubbing him with a sword.

"I want my lawyer _and_ a better nickname." Gibson grumbled.

"You can probably have one of those." Jake told him, happily, and began reading him his rights.

***

Things were a little noisy after that. The house where they'd spent days in quiet and determined unobtrusiveness was, for a little while, swarming with scene investigators, taking photos and fingerprints. Amy was overseeing a lot of it, and if any of the team doing the documenting had been tempted to be lax, with a suspect on tape and in custody, she was more than prepared to step in and remind them that in this case, everything was done by the book and to the letter. Jake had little to do other than stroll through and accept the congratulations of the local officers. 

He did question Gibson enough to determine the location of the raccoons he'd been using, and coordinated with animal control about collecting them. He was a little disappointed they just used snare poles and cages to transport them, and refused to listen to his enquiries about tiny handcuffs or fingerprinting.

But soon enough even that was over.

They called the Blains as soon as Gibson was formally under arrest, everything that could be had been photographed, bagged and tagged as needed, and they'd been able to begin the process of packing up to depart. They'd hand the place back over to its rightful owners, and leave the sleepy little town, back to life in the big city.

Back to being just colleagues.

They collected their go bags, a small mountain of monitoring equipment that was headed back to the precinct, and left the building.

The stood on the front steps of the house, waiting for the rightful owners to return and reclaim their keys. There were a few neighbors trying to look casual as they wandered up and down the street, pretending to jog or walk their dogs, but clearly trying to catch glimpses of the relative excitement of police officers filling out paperwork as they sat in their cruisers. A few bolder ones were approaching the officers stationed at the tape line, asking what was going on. Jake recognized a few from his walks around the neighborhood and the park. He and Amy, he realized, would go down in local gossip circle history for some years to come. They'd be the center of a great deal of speculation and wonder.

He couldn't blame them. He was doing a lot of wondering and speculating himself. He had no idea what to say to her. He nervously fiddled with the wedding band that was still on his finger. He hadn't quite gotten around to taking it off yet.

Amy shifted her feet a little. "This was good. I mean, I still hate the suburbs, but this was good."

Jake looked up at the treetops, the houses across the street, awkwardly anywhere other than at her. "Yeah. It was-" fun? wonderful? magic? "more than I'd hoped for."

"Me too. I mean, I hadn't been dreaming of it for years like you, but-" she trailed off, awkwardly.

He stepped closer to her. "I couldn't have asked for better. It was everything I could have wanted."

She blushed and looked away. "It wasn't what I was expecting either. But it all worked out, somehow."

He wanted so much to brush her hair away from her face. He knew he was staring. “When I asked you to join me on this case, I was thinking that if everything worked out, this could be the greatest week of my life. And it really was.”

The Blain's car was coming down the street. They both turned to face it as it approached.

As their bodies moved, his shoulder bumped hers, and on impulse he reached and grabbed for her hand. He gave it a tight squeeze. She squeezed back, hard enough that he could feel her fingers trembling a little. Under his fingers he felt the smooth surface of the ring she was still wearing.

He swallowed, moved to interlace their fingers, and when she she reciprocated, he said softly, “The part where we caught the bad guy was good too."

The End.


End file.
